Frances de la Tour: five best moments

Frances de la Tour is not famous for film. The public still mostly recognise her for Rising Damp; critical recognition has come, in the main, from her stage work (three Oliviers, one Tony).

And yet De la Tour has also made movies: an eclectic selection featuring collaborations with Martin Scorsese, the Wombles and Denzel Washington. Sometimes she’s seen only fleetingly – the briefest of fee-fi-fo-fums in last year’s Into the Woods, and just one appearance opposite Vicious housemate Ian McKellen in this week’s Mr Holmes. Sometimes we never even see the scenes: her role as a headmistress having an affair with Anne Reid in Love Actually was left on the cutting-room floor.

So let’s make do with what we have (and what legit clips we can find online). Here’s five key film appearances from the great English actor.

Wombling Free

In this 1975 big-screen transfer for Wimbledon’s waddling litter pickers, De la Tour plays the slightly snide suburban mother of Bonnie Langford. Initially, she’s sceptical of the furry fellas, but warms up to them after realising what a boon they may represent for the local community. Here, she reads the Times over cornflakes and a fag.

The Book of Eli

Denzel Washington and Mila Kunis shoot and scavenge their way over a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Then they’re offered sandwiches by Frances de la Tour and Michael Gambon in one of this 2010 film’s more winning twists.

Private Peaceful

One of De la Tour’s most fruitful collaborations has been with Alan Bennett. She’s Vaughan Williams’s widow in the forthcoming Lady in the Van movie, and was a withering Mrs Lintott in both the original stage production of The History Boys and its subsequent movie.

But her most prolific big-screen pair-ups were with the late Richard Griffiths, who she played opposite in The History Boys, Harry Potter, Hugo, and this lesser-known movie adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s first world war story. Private Peaceful presented a rare opportunity for De le Tour to play malevolent, though the malicious Grandma Wolf is captured in this trailer in a rare moment of demure flirtation.

Alice in Wonderland

Amid the hi-res, day-glo battiness of Tim Burton’s Lewis Carroll adaption, De la Tour’s Chekhovian turn as Aunt Imogene felt rooted in real-world tragicomedy.

Rising Damp

Yet the only big-screen role for which De la Tour has thus far won an award is also that which continues to define (and pigeonhole) her. Miss Jones, passionate yet repressed, posh yet not wholly repulsed by her landlord, is here seen dining with a drugged-up Rigsby on a night out. The film version (made, like the fourth series, without Richard Beckinsale) was a peculiar pick and mix of Eric Chappell’s biggest hits, remoulded into a single plot. Yet despite this tonal obliqueness, it’s hard to sniff at virtuoso actors nailing well-practiced lines.